View full sizeNike Golf president Cindy Davis is responsible for a division with the tall task of catching and surpassing the No. 1 brand in golf, Adidas' TaylorMade. Davis' year started with welcoming Rory McIlroy, the world's No. 1 golfer, as a Nike athlete at an event in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Thomas Boyd / The Oregonian

Nike, the world's biggest sporting good company, finds itself in an usual position today at the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla.

Oregon's largest company has to look up to see the top dog.

Nike has the Midas touch with nearly every sport, but in golf it remains just one of several brands scrapping for a larger piece of a pie that shows no obvious signs of getting bigger.

The brand signed its first golfer -- Seve Ballesteros of Spain -- nearly three decades ago. But Nike Golf didn't get into the game in earnest until 2002, when it introduced its first clubs. In a crowded field, Nike Golf has had to struggle, trailing at least five other brands in several club categories. But when it comes to clothes, the swoosh's historic sweet spot, Nike Golf ranks first in apparel sales and second in footwear.

Golf courses have closed across the U.S. in recent years, in response to overbuilding as well as recession, while the average number of rounds played per active golfer is anemic.

Nike, which often is identified with a core demographic of the young and active, would seem to be a more comfortable fit with action sports and the teen and twentysomethings who pursue them. The brand has always presented an unusual fit with the more sedate -- and decidedly older-skewing -- game of golf.

But with last week's signing of the world's No. 1 golfer, 23-year-old Rory McIlroy, along with the re-energized play of former No. 1 Tiger Woods and key product launches and a move into a spacious off-campus golf headquarters, Nike has made clear it is as committed to the sport as it was in 1996 when it signed Woods.

What may not be clear, though, is why.

"It's a side show. So small, it doesn't matter," said Morningstar analyst Paul Swinand, who follows Nike and used to follow Callaway Golf."My guess," said Swinand, "is they don't like that TaylorMade is doing so well."

That would be Adidas-owned TaylorMade. There aren't many categories in which Adidas competes head-to-head with Nike and can claim supremacy over its archrival. In golf, it can.

Cindy Davis, president of Nike Golf since 2008, agreed in a recent interview that striving to be the top brand was a big motivation for Nike Golf.

"Yeah," said the one-time golfer Furman University golfer, "we're in it to win."

That motivation -- and the talent and resources to make it happen -- isn't always enough to stay with Nike.

View full sizeNike Golf moved its division and 250 of its 750 employees into a new home last summer, a building in a Beaverton office park about two miles north of the World Headquarters campus. The putting green in the courtyard is patterned after the 12th hole at Augusta National Golf Club, part of the "Amen Corner."Thomas Boyd / The Oregonian

After all, Nike last year jettisoned two subsidiaries -- Cole Haan and Umbro International -- it decided were not contributing enough to the overall mission of a company with $24.1 billion in sales. And while it remains in the action sports business with Hurley International LLC, it has drastically cut back on the Nike Brand's involvement there, too. Bauer Hockey, recreational bicycling, Starter brand clothing and bowling are other affiliates that have been shown the door in recent years.

Sometimes over the past two decades, Nike Golf felt like it was not wanted at the party, either.

"We had to overcome it internally and externally," said Mark Bisbing, Nike's director of golf sports marketing from 1981 to 1996. "There were factions in Nike who didn't think we should be in golf. They didn't see it as a sport. They didn't see golfers as athletes."

And competitors in the sometimes rarefied atmosphere of golf didn't always welcome the swoosh, either. That's nothing unusual. Whether it's bicycling, surfing, skateboarding or hockey, the reigning sports establishment in any category typically has greeted Nike the same way: skepticism, if not fear.

Last year in golf, Nike had about 7 percent market share -- $726 million in sales -- of golf's $10 billion market. The division has 750 employees, 250 of whom work at the headquarters -- "The Clubhouse" -- in a Beaverton office park about two miles north of the company's main World Headquarters campus.

For golfers, a clientele that relishes The Next Big Thing for gear advancement, the Covert drivers feature a cavity back design which Nike says will result in longer and straighter shots.

What the company doesn't say is that it hopes the drivers will silence critics who contend Nike Golf has yet to advance the game's hardware since it started selling clubs in 2002.

Davis dismisses that notion, and offers up another reason for Nike to stick with the golf segment.

"It's very brand enhancing," she said. "To have our brand at Pebble Beach, to have our brand at some of the finest resorts, to be able to position the product in a premium nature, that completely lines up with what we're all about: innovative, premium product."